Docu on Debbie and Carrie is for ‘unflinching viewers only’

Debbie Reynolds (left) and Carrie Fisher—AFP

Right after the consecutive daughter-mother exits of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds late last month, a documentary on their turbulent but ultimately inspiring relationship, titled “Bright Lights,” was shown on HBO.

It was strikingly different from the usual reality TV show about stellar families, which tend to focus on the attendant glitz and glamour.

“Bright Lights” turned out to have an ironic title, because it bared the often-dark side to the stellar and familial relationship.

Carrie, who was a perceptive writer aside from being a star, insightfully identified the “problem” at its very inception—when she was born!

Her parents, Debbie and Eddie Fisher, were both popular show biz stars, so their fame upstaged her birth, and fans at the hospital fussed over them much more than her!

Of course, she was too young to feel the unintended upstaging that was going on—but when she was older, she realized that her parents were too busy with their thriving stellar careers to be reliably “available” to her and her brother, Todd.

In time, the problem was exacerbated by her father’s addiction to a number of substances, which made him come up with dynamic and exciting vocal performances, but depleted him after his shows were over.

One of the most disturbing scenes in the documentary produced by Todd Fisher, Fisher Stevens, Julie Nives and Alexis Bloom, and directed by Alexis and Fisher is a long father-daughter interview of sorts. In it, an old and shockingly infirm Eddie gasps out feeble and laconic answers to his daughter’s probing questions.

Yes, he weakly agreed, he had been an absent father, but no, it didn’t mean that he didn’t love her—as Carrie slowly and sadly shook her head.

The graphically honest scene is painful to watch, but it is by no means the production’s “for unflinching viewers only” moment.

Debbie herself turns out to be candid and self-deprecatory to a fault, and also shares some dark sides and interludes to her otherwise “officially sunny” signature persona.

She was sometimes a great, roaring fun to be with, occasionally putting Carrie in her place by pointedly reminding her that it was Debbie’s money that was being spent for all their extravagant expenses!

No wonder they split up for a decade, with Carrie belatedly fighting for and finding her place in the sun in Hollywood.

With two flawed and even “damaged” parents like Debbie and Eddie, she could have failed miserably. But, despite her own battle with bipolar dysfunction, she found her own fame and fortune, not just as an actress, but also as a book author and screenwriter of no mean repute.